After: Whiteout (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 4) (7 page)

Hilyard
gave a nod. “I don’t know if it was her, but somebody went this way.”

As
they gathered around the tracks Hilyard had spotted, DeVontay said, “It’s
probably her. The Zaps are traveling in packs now. I don’t think one would fly
solo, especially out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“Look,”
Stephen said. He pointed to a clear print that seemed to mirror Rachel’s foot
size and sneaker style.

Hilyard
checked the compass on his wristwatch. “She’s still moving northwest, then.”

“Heading
for her grandfather’s compound.”

“But
why did she leave us?” Campbell said. “She made a big deal about how we’d all
be part of a community. Kumbaya for the doomsday crowd. And then she jumps ship
in the middle of the night?”

“Without
any supplies,” DeVontay said. “The compound is still two days away, if the map
is right.”

“The
only thing we can do is keep moving,” Hilyard said. “Stick with the plan. Maybe
we’ll catch up to her.”

“Sounds
good to me,” Campbell said with evident eagerness. Hilyard was now the
acknowledged leader, and that was fine with him. DeVontay carried the extra
rifle they’d taken from the Zaphead, but Campbell was obviously a lot more
militaristic than him. That was fine, too. DeVontay couldn’t shoot worth a
damn, given his lack of depth perception.

“Even
if it’s not her tracks, we’d be better off having a secure location like this
compound to regroup and get our bearings,” Hilyard said. “Sgt. Shipley’s bunch
will be wandering around, too, and I don’t want to run into them out in the
open.”

“That
okay with you, Stephen?” DeVontay asked the boy.

“As
long as it’s warm there,” he answered, wrapping his arms around his chest.

DeVontay
noticed for the first time that the air was chilly. In fact, he could see his
breath. It billowed out and mixed with the fog. “We’ll burn every tree in the
woods once we reach Franklin Wheeler’s place. For now, the best way to stay
warm is to keep moving.”

After
an hour of walking, the sun broke through the cloud cover, although it was
barely strong enough to burn away most of the fog. Campbell took point, staying
just at the edge of visibility. As they gained elevation, the trees became
thinner and more barren. Here the autumnal color had gone, and the landscape
was gray and brown, accented by the occasional deep green of pine and
rhododendron.

Working
from DeVontay’s map and Hilyard’s compass, they kept north as much as the
terrain would let them. The only tracks they came upon belonged to deer,
raccoons, and bear. Once they heard a thundering roar that sounded like heavy
traffic, and then they came upon the tumbling creek and a high waterfall that
must have dropped a hundred feet down a sheer rock face. The footing was
treacherous, and one of the horses strained a leg muscle climbing the rocky
slopes alongside the waterway.

“This
is goat country,” DeVontay said. “I don’t think we can take the horses any
farther.”

“We
might need them for meat this winter,” Campbell said.

“No,”
Stephen exclaimed, throwing his arms around the neck of the injured one.

“They’ll
be better off on their own,” Hilyard said. “They can forage much better if
they’re off the trail.”

“Who’s
going to carry our stuff?” Campbell said.

“We’ll
divide it up. Take the essentials and ditch the rest.”

They
unloaded the horses and crammed their backpacks with sleeping bags, food,
ponchos, and first-aid supplies. Stephen reluctantly left his comic
books—DeVontay had helped him assemble quite a run of vintage Spiderman issues
in excellent condition—but kept a paperback copy of
Watership Down
.
“Rachel is reading it to me,” he explained.

Hilyard
and Campbell divvied up the ammo, and DeVontay took on an extra burden of
canned food to make up the difference.

“I
sure hope Grandpa Wheeler has a pantry,” Campbell said. “I don’t want to be
eating roots and bark all winter.”

“We’ll
have time to prepare, if it comes to that,” Hilyard said. “The hard freezes
won’t hit for another couple of weeks.”

“The
weather might be screwed up, for all we know,” Campbell said. “The
electromagnetic radiation might have altered climate patterns. This professor I
met predicted all kinds of changes that we wouldn’t even notice for a while.
Because we’re all too busy surviving to worry about hot or cold, or whether the
whales migrate, or if all the bees made it back to their hives.”

“Like
those four thousand nuclear power plants out there melting down right now?”
Hilyard said. “The good news just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?”

“And
how about this?” Campbell said. “What if we get to this Milepost 291 and
there’s no compound? We’re stuck out in the middle of nowhere, on the top of
the world with winter coming, and all we have is a can of Beanie Weenies.”

“There
are always options,” Hilyard said. “No need to scare the boy.”

“I’m
not scared,” Stephen said, wiping at one grimy cheek. “And the compound will be
there. Rachel promised.”

DeVontay
was glad the boy remained optimistic, but he didn’t understand Stephen’s sudden
loyalty to her. Maybe after they’d all reunited, he remembered how much care
and attention she’d provided. Well, DeVontay missed her, too. Despite her
strange behavior, the real Rachel was still inside her somewhere. He was
determined to give her every chance.

“We’re
barely covering half a mile an hour,” Hilyard said. “By this map, we’re still
probably five miles away, but we should be reaching the boundary of the national
park soon. But that also means we’re closer to Shipley’s bunker.”

“Do
you think you can find it again if we need to?” Campbell said. “Like, maybe use
it as a fallback plan. We can wave a white flag and see if they’ll take us in.”

“Sure,”
Hilyard said. “I can find it. But Shipley won’t take prisoners.”

“Who
said anything about becoming prisoners? I want to enlist.”

“You’ll
get plenty more chances to kill Zapheads,” DeVontay said. “Looks like they’ll
be around for a while.”

“Probably
longer than us.” Campbell removed his glasses, propped his rifle across one
arm, and rubbed the lenses clean with a shirt tail. “They don’t care about
food, weather, pain, or death. The stuff we worry about the most.”

“Or
love,” DeVontay said, putting a hand on Stephen’s shoulder.

“Like
that’s ever made the world better.”

DeVontay
adjusted his pack, picked up a nylon bag that held a tent, and swatted the
closest horse on the flank. “Thanks for the lift, ma’am, but now you’re being
put out to pasture.”

The
group climbed a slippery stack of stones and followed the rocky bank of the
creek. Stephen took a last look back. “They’re watching.”

“They’ll
head back down to the valley soon enough,” Hilyard said. “They’ll smell the
grass and keep moving.”

“Do
you think Rachel came this way?” DeVontay asked.

“Well,
it’s the easiest route. I guess she could have swung around and looked for a
highway, but according to your map, that’s at least twenty miles out of the
way.”

The
creek grew smaller, fed by narrow tributaries that seeped out of the cracks in
layers of stone. Another hour passed in silence, and DeVontay was wiped out. He
could only imagine how fatigued Stephen was, but the boy didn’t utter a single
complaint. The air grew even colder and dark clouds massed above the thinning
canopy. There were no signs of either Zapheads or Shipley’s soldiers, and even
the wildlife seemed to have abandoned the bleak landscape.

DeVontay
was just about to ask Hilyard for a pit stop when Campbell shouted at them from
the point. The three of them broke into a run to catch up, Stephen slipping and
nearly tumbling down a moss-covered ravine. DeVontay caught him by a strap on
his backpack and yanked him to his feet. They came upon Campbell in a clearing,
standing beside a locust fence post with a few strands of barbed wire curling
from the wood.

“Civilization,”
Campbell said, pointing his rifle at a dented sign nailed to a tree.

The
sign read “National Park Service Property.”

CHAPTER
SIX

“Go
there,” the baby said, pumping a tiny fist toward the building ahead.

Rosa
Jiminez wondered if the others noticed the baby had learned a new word. She was
afraid to mention anything to Marina, who was already nearly catatonic with
worry. Cathy, though, couldn’t be happier, doting over her strange little son.

“What’s
that, honey?” she cooed, holding the child close under her chin, beaming down
into its peculiar, sparkling eyes.

A
pudgy fist pump. “Go there now.”

The
voice was small and childlike, but somehow commanding. Marina glanced at Rosa,
who gave a sad shake of her head. No, they couldn’t make a run for it, not yet.
With Jorge almost certainly dead, she was responsible for their daughter, and
she wasn’t sure she could feed and protect both of them.

Cathy
was young and strong, despite the handicap of the infant, and so far the four
of them—Rosa couldn’t help including the infant as part of their team—had
managed to find shelter, avoid detection, and maintain a steady food supply. Marina seemed healthy enough, although her teeth were bothering her. In After, dental
hygiene was near the bottom of the priority list, somewhere below “Don’t get
killed by Zapheads” and “Don’t get raped and murdered by survivors.”

Besides,
the infant possessed some kind of keen instinct that Rosa believed had helped
them avoid danger. Never mind that Joey might have his own selfish motive for
their survival.

Who
could know the thinking of a Zaphead? And it’s their world now, anyway. Far
more of them than us.

She
was immediately ashamed by the thought. Jorge would not want her to suffer any
weakness, not when Marina counted on Rosa. As long as she had breath, Rosa would do what was necessary.

And
what was necessary right now was to let the Zaphead child keep them safe.

“He
wants us to go to that building,” Rosa said. The two-story storefront featured
glass that looked black in the sunshine. Protruding vinyl letters high on the
brick façade heralded “Mabel’s” and a sign on the door read “Open— Come on in.”

“Well,
sure thing, honey,” Cathy said, kissing Joey on his tiny, smooth forehead. “You
could use a nappy nap and probably a didey.”

She
turned the infant, hoisted him, and gave a sniff to his swaddled rear, then
scrunched her nose in a stinky face. “Joey went poo poo. Didey for the boy.”

Joey
was barely three months old, born shortly before the end of the world. Despite
his diapers, he was more advanced than a toddler years older. Joey spoke, but
he didn’t cry. He took his mother’s breast, but he didn’t squirm. He rarely
slept, but often looked around with those solemn dark eyes glinting orange-red
sparks as if a volcano was exploding inside his skull.

“Go
there now go,” he insisted, punching the air to emphasize each word. He’d been
directing them ever since they’d abandoned Franklin Wheeler’s compound. In fact,
leaving seemed to have been the infant’s idea in the first place, and now Rosa could no longer remember why she thought leaving was such a great option. Even if she
thought both her husband and Franklin Wheeler were dead, they had food and
shelter there.

They’d
come upon the town that morning, although “town” might be a little too generous
for the mobile home park, gas station, post office, used car lot, Baptist
church, and McDonald’s that clustered around a two-lane intersection. According
to the signpost on the highway, this was Siler Creek. Rosa had seen a number of
such places in eastern Tennessee, and apparently the North Carolina side of the
border contained the same type of rundown brick main street.

Siler
Creek featured another familiar element—it was dead.

Silent
cars jutted from ditches where they’d run off the road during the solar storms,
while a refrigerator truck bearing Oscar Mayer meats had collided with a police
car in the center of the intersection. A tow truck was jacked atop a fire
hydrant, the water main long since drained dry. The drive-through line at
McDonald’s was backed up in arc around the parking lot, and plenty of moldering
corpses hunched over steering wheels just a few feet from their final Big Macs.

“Baby
need change of clothes,” Cathy said.

“Go
now go,” the baby shrilly repeated. He seemed visibly annoyed with his mother.
Maybe her baby talk was beneath him.

“We’d
better…” Rosa didn’t want to say the rest of the words, but there was no way
around them. “…do what he says.”

Marina
took Rosa’s hand and squeezed. Rosa gave her bravest
false smile, and Marina smiled back. “Besides, it looks like rain.”